Our educational system is producing graduates who can read but are not readers, who can write but are not writers i.e. functional illiterates [1]. They do not read fiction, have often never read books except those that they were forced to read for their exams, but which mostly they cunningly avoided by cramming the notes, and many a times not even the notes, just the presentation slides! I now think they are not even buying, let alone reading the text books!
- Destruction of Merit by Bhutto’s Nationalization
- Violation of Fairness in Government Boards’ Examinations
- Bureaucratic Invasion of Classrooms: Proliferation of Large School Chains
- Abuse of Cambridge Education System O/A Level
- Mad Race for Grades at the Expense of Education
- Tuition, Notes and Guides at the Expense of Reading Culture
- Reverse Engineering the Question Papers by Specialist Tutors
- Disillusionment of Intellectuals and Ideologues: Death of Student Activism
- Degrees became more Important than Knowledge
- Is Internet the Cause of Decline in Reading?
1. Destruction of Merit by Bhutto’s Nationalization
Depth of Degrading of Merit: PM defending fake degrees
The rot started with Bhutto’s nationalization that played havoc with the structure of education system. Not only did it destroy the private schools, more to suffer were the government schools. There was just no competence in the Government ministries and departments to handle the load of huge number of educational institutions that came under the Government control. The system of inspection went down, the system of finances went down, the system of checks and balances evaporated as Government service became equivalent to a source of nepotism and for giving employment on the basis of ethnicity rather than on merit. Destruction of merit was the severest blow to the foundation of the entire system of education. Meritocracy went out of favor and was made fun of everywhere.
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| Depth of Degrading of Merit: PM defending fake degrees |
The rot started with Bhutto’s nationalization that played havoc with the structure of education system. Not only did it destroy the private schools, more to suffer were the government schools. There was just no competence in the Government ministries and departments to handle the load of huge number of educational institutions that came under the Government control. The system of inspection went down, the system of finances went down, the system of checks and balances evaporated as Government service became equivalent to a source of nepotism and for giving employment on the basis of ethnicity rather than on merit. Destruction of merit was the severest blow to the foundation of the entire system of education. Meritocracy went out of favor and was made fun of everywhere.
2. Violation of Fairness in Government Boards’ Examinations
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| Corruption in Board Exams |
Once upon a time, grades in examinations used to be a measure of scholarship and a representation of the opening of mind in a culture of reading and intellectual debates. Corruption started the decline of fairness in the results of the examination boards and with that there was a decrease in the importance of independent thinking. With the pathetic payment per answer script to examiner, the quality of checking declined. Good examiners refused to check the examination scripts. Those who did take the assignment started taking more scripts than they could check with fairness. This then got coupled with the engaging of examiners with dubious qualification. This resulted in the penalizing of original writings and innovative thinking. Only the standard replies were expected and were given good grades.
Decline in fairness started with the prevalence of cheating in examination halls of the board examinations. First the invigilators were bribed, then the examination centers were bribed. Where this system of bribes and favors did not work, the centers and the invigilators were coerced using threats, booty mafias and violence. Then the corruption started spreading to bribing of the examiners, and eventually the entire system got corrupted. And then it became quite simple. You bribe the touts in each board and for a fee they would manipulate the results to the grade that you are willing to pay for. Answer scripts of good students were exchanged with scripts of bad students; scripts were often forged and substitutions became prevalent. Worst to suffer were the good students who were grief stricken to find that their excellent performance in class was in stark contrast with their board results, and they could do nothing about that. The resulting frustrations resulted in parents pulling out the good students from the board examinations and transferring them to Cambridge System. The damage was now complete. Elite schools and smart students have moved to Cambridge system but that became another problem as explained below. A few years ago Punjab actively started to eliminate the cheating culture and the situation has improved [4]. Situation in KPK has also improved. However, situation of cheating in Sindh and Baluchistan remains pathetic.
The net result of violation of fairness was the development of conventional wisdom in the environment which advised and convinced the students and their parents that reading and writing has no value, and what is of value is money or contacts. This started often as jest and as criticism, but the generations of students took it seriously and this thinking has solidified in our culture.
3. Bureaucratic Invasion of Classroom: Proliferation of Large Schools and School Chains
Growth of large schools and private sector school systems or the huge chains of schools spread around the country can be correlated with the growth of functional illiteracy. We see a mad rush to establish corporate chains that (i) value structure over content, (ii) consistency over scholarship, (iii) form over content, (iv) standardization over creativity, (v) mass production assembly lines over child centered education and (vii) the letter of the rule over the intent of the rule which may be termed as the bureaucratic invasion of the classrooms [2]. This bureaucratic invasion of classroom has robbed the teacher from his autonomy to customize the lecture according to the requirements of the students.
Pressure of syllabus coverage acts as the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of teachers which has caused them to became automaton for covering the course irrespective of whether the students are understanding or not. Teachers often find no incentive to develop their innovative delivery style or improvise on their methodology. Their interest and challenge of making the class engaging and interesting wanes and compromises their ability to be creative when the only thing they are accountable to is the syllabus coverage using prescribed forms [3].
4. Abuse of Cambridge Education System’s O/A Levels
Cambridge system of education became popular in Pakistan for two reasons; first it was supposed to be more conceptual which did not require rote memorization, and secondly it was supposed to be more fair and transparent. I think it has lost ground on both accounts.
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| Guides, Past Papers, Guess Papers |
In Pakistan, implementation of Cambridge System has moved away from its original objective of developing the conceptual foundations to designing the shortcuts for passing the exams. The system we call O/A Levels has mostly been phased out of the world, and only being used in Pakistan and a couple of other countries, and in Pakistan, the system is being systematically abused. During early 1970s, the use of past papers for preparing for the board exams used to be a source of embarrasment for good students. Only the poor performers who had failed and were appearing in the supplementary exams would dare to use past papers and guess papers, and they too would use them surreptitiously. Similarly, buying of the solved keys for various subjects was only done by students who were weak. Students using these keys or past papers would never advertise this. Good students were those who read the books on their own and did not require these artificial props.
I am now alarmed to see the schools officially and formally using these artificial props for preparing the exams. In fact, teachers and schools recommend these proudly and force the parents to make their children use them diligently. The schools have shifted their focus away from making the students self learners and independent learners. They are now focusing more on making them dependent upon targeted preparations for passing the exams, and scoring as many A’s as possible. Scholarship has been reduced to a measure of the number of A grades that a student has earned!
There are now increasing reports of papers getting leaked, and manipulation of results and the reports are getting stronger in intensity reminding us of the decline in transparency and fairness of the board examinations [8, 12]. There are rumors of answer scripts getting changed, students and their parents are reporting dramatic fall in the grades. Dramatic rise in the results is also being reported. Students performing badly in the class are surprisingly getting A Stars and those performing excellently are getting surprisingly bad grades. I have been shown the miserable scripts of such students a couple of weeks before the exams followed by their unbelievable stupendous O’level results [5].
5. Mad Race for Grades at the Expense of Education
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| Grades vs Education |
The schools routinely advertise through large bill boards the number of A grades scored by their students and the number of positions secured in the board exams. Grades which used to be a by-product have now become the prime objective of scholarship. This situation is aptly described by Alfie Kohn in his book “Punished by Rewards: Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes [6].
As schools have started focusing on how to score A grades, the emphasis has decreased on enabling the student to open his mind and to understand the broader context of knowledge and the emphasis has increased on just mastering the narrow context of what would come in the exam and how to score well in exam. Breadth and depth of knowledge and scoring on exams are sometimes working in opposite directions when you try to measure learning that has occured over a couple of years in a single 3 hour exam! In the end, grades only represent your ability to recall the right thing at the right time and within the stipulated time period on a particular day of the year. Application of knowledge is often not constrained in such manners in the real life.
This is happening despite there being not much need for these grades. Growth of private institutions of higer education and universities since the 1980s have opened up scores of options all over the country for higher education. Most institutions now rely more on aptitude test and interviews and less on the abundance of A’s. Having top grades used to be a necessary requirement till the 1980s for getting admissions to professional medical and engineering universities that could be counted on fingers and were all in the public sector.
6. Tuitions, Notes and Guides at the Expense of Reading Culture
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| Test Preparation vs Education and Opening of Mind |
Focus on grades spilled over to the tuition culture. Students of even the best of schools are now taking tuitions. Learning somehow has become a separate entity quite different from tuition which is more about scoring in the exams. The two are now in a conflict in which exam preparation always wins! Between the school and the tuitions, a student neither has time for sports nor for pleasure reading or hobbies. Consequently, there is a drastic decrease in the opening of the mind.
I can never understand why notes written by people with poor expression and on hardly readable paper can be a better substitute to very beautiful and appealing books now available. The intense use of guides, past papers, guess papers and the culture surrounding these have numbed the minds of the students and are so accustomed to spoon feeding that they refuse to use their minds.
7. Reverse Engineering the Question Papers by Specialist Tutors
I now know of tutors who have so reverse engineered the senior Cambridge system that given an average student, they now have the confidence to guarantee a particular grade in one month of tuition and another grade in three months of tuitions. Their recipes are now so perfected, so calibrated, and so honed to the examination pattern, that one only needs to go to them for a few months to get a particular grade. A remarkable reverse engineering of the O’Level and A’Level has taken place. These tutors are reputed to be earning lacs of rupees per month from tuition culture. Before the exams, the guess papers proliferate in the market the same way it happens in the board examinations.
8. Disillusionment of the Intellectuals and Ideologues: Death of Student Activism
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| Winning Candiates of DMC, Year ?? Ideological Debates?? |
Crippling of student activism and intellectual debates took place following the violence on the campuses in the 1970s. Finally the student activism and culture of intellectual and ideological debates died with the ban on student unions. The authorities threw the baby out along with the bath water. Engagement in these debates would force many students to contemplate the wider context of the problems affecting the nation and the possible solutions. These would also compel them to read and be prepared with their intellectual adversaries.
9. Degrees Became more Important than Knowledge
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| Degree vs Education |
Destruction of meritocracy by the quota system that destroyed the Government infrastructure of education, and prevalence of nepotism and corruption followed by the commercialization of the degree awards and the scoring of grades has created a situation in which knowledge lost its respect and its value.
Once education lost this wider context of how it would help in solving the problems of the people and humanity, it became simply a stepping stone for getting a job. Devoid of its noble mission to remove darkness from the world and to spread light everywhere, the degree got relegated to a necessary evil that needs to be overcome. Thus, the emphasis shifted from getting the knowledge or enjoying the process of learning to getting a degree, whether original or fake [9]. People started talking about getting a degree by hook or crook.
10. Is Internet the Cause of decline in the Reading Culture?
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| Internet vs Reading Culture |
Number of people writing books have increased, the number of books that are being published has increased. People are reading more on the Internet. However, in Pakistan this number continues to decrease. The hypothesis that somehow Internet is responsible for decreasing the trend for reading or writing is simply not tenable. It should have increased rather than decreased.
[more on this later]
References:
- [1] This definition of Functional Illiterate was first heard from Mr Salman Siddiqui, Director, ERDC (Educational Resouce Development Center). As pointed out by Mr Rayed Afzal, this term has been around since 1980s and means as per Wikipedia: “functionally illiterate persons can read and possibly write simple sentences with a limited vocabulary, but cannot read or write well enough to deal with the everyday requirements of life in their own society.”
- [2] “Insult to Intelligence; Bureaucratic Invasion of Classroom” by Frank Smith
- [3] Syllabus Coverage is the Enemy of Understanding, syedirfanhyder.blogspot.com
- [4] Elimination of Copy and Cheating Culture in Punjab Examination Boards May Lead to Elimination of Entry Tests for Engineering and Medical Colleges.
- [5] Those interested can be connected to respected teachers. I have myself seen answer scripts of students that they wrote a couple of weeks before the A’Level exams showing pathetic preparation but then their A’Level results surprisingly showing A star grades. The rumors are rife and this needs to be investigated.
- [6] “Punished by Rewards” by Alfie Kohn
- [7] Managing English Teaching Outcomes in Universities: An Experiential Learning Case Study of ESL/EFL, syedirfanhyder.blogspot.com
- [8] CIE Papers Leaked in Pakistan?
- [9] Degree is Degree whether Original or Fake, Aslam Raisani Minister’s Statement in Daily Nation.
- [10] Fake Degrees of law makers and government officials, Daily Dawn.
- [11] Students Resent O’Level Exams Re-test: Leaked Papers, Daily Tribune
See Also:
- Can Grades and Degrees Measure the Success of Students?
- Managing English Teaching Outcomes in Universities: An Experiential Learning Case Study of ESL/EFL
- How Language Acquisition is Made Difficult for Children: Eight Lessons from Urdu Acquisition Case Study.
- Anti-National Language Policy leads to Rule by Rich and Corrupt Elites
- Managing English Teaching Outcomes in Universities: An Experiential Learning Case Study of ESL/EFL
- Why Project Based Learning: An Experiential Learning Case Study of Language Teaching
- Most Effective Way of Cutting a Nation from its History – Imposing a Foreign Language
- Capitalist Transactions Replacing Traditions and Values from Istanbul to Makkah
- Georgia – Lesson in Preserving Language, Religion and Culture
- TED Talk: Suzanne Talhouk: Don’t kill your language and your nation
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